Confronting Social Injustices

In the book The Tale of Two Cities, the author Charles Dickens begins by criticizing the aristocrats' treatment of the poor people of France--the shameless corruption, abuse, and inhumanity of the French nobles towards the peasantry. Even "church leaders entertained themselves with some 'humane' actions as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with princers, and his body burned alive--because he had not kneeled down, in the rain, to honor a procession of monks some fifty or sixty yards away." Dickens ends by noting that the same social atrocities occur even when the power shifts from the aristocrats to the lower classes--the masses, oppressed for centuries, rise up at last and destroy their masters becoming themselves just as evil and corrupt.

There is always a danger that this scenario could happen when social injustices are confronted, especially if a person or a people focuses on his or their victimization. Therefore, when confronting social injustices it would be wise to do so in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness rather than in a spirit of revenge and retaliation. It is only through the former that everyone can start to heal and move forward--and thus, break the unproductive cycle.